Tag: Pique the Geek

Distillation is a technique of “squeezing” out the essence of a given material (or series of thoughts to one or a few abstractions) into a concentrated product.  The term is from the Latin, distillo, from the combining term de, meaning “down” and the noun stilla, a drop.  Thus, distilled water is literally a drop of water coming down something.  Taken to the extreme, distilled water literally means “a coming down drop of water that is water”.  That does not fit with the modern usage, but is illustrative.

Aristotle, with all of his faults, noted that seawater, boilt under cool sponges, would yield fresh water when the sponges were pressed.  Distillation was known in the ancient world, but not much used except for preparing “medical” remedies, most of them toxic, in a manner that I will describe to you later, in a more modern form.

Actually, the earth is a huge still, with the water cycle reproducing exactly, but on a massive scale, what goes on in an industrial or laboratory still.  Heating, evaporation, segregation of components, and condensation are all essential parts of distillation, and our planet does it well.  Without that process, the planet would not be recognizable.

We shall get away from food for this installment of Pique the Geek and talk about something more, well, geeky.  The concept of nuclear power is widely known, but the actual way that is works is mysterious to some because people think that it is hard.  Actually, the basic science behind nuclear power is very simple, but the technology to contain and make it practical is complex.

This complexity is due to several reasons, not the least of which is safety.  Whilst the nuclear fuel to power commercial reactors is not very malignant, after that fuel has been used a while it becomes extremely radioactive due to a large number of complex nuclear interactions.  It is the spent reactor fuel that is the real problem.  However, there is a completely different technology used to generate electricity that does not involve a nuclear reactor, and we shall discuss this one first.

I know that this essay is likely not to be popular with progressive folks, but I am not only a progressive, I am a scientist as well.  In my opinion, the only relatively clean option for power that we have, other than natural gas (which is less plentiful and not as clean as the TeeVee adverts say) is the fission of uranium and plutonium.

I realize that this sounds pretty bold, but please bear with me whilst I build my case.  We need power in the meantime for the transition between fossil fuels and truly sustainable ones, and nuclear power is the only one that can provide that power.  First the physics, then the economics, and then the future.

This essay is sort of a prequel to two that I am scheduled to write for What’s for Dinner, posted at Dailykos.com (and here) Saturday evenings around 7:30 Eastern.  Next Saturday I am writing rather long one about jellies (and related items) with lots of technical information and pictures of the process from start to finish.  On 05 December I return to write about my favorite holiday goodies.

This got me to thinking that some of those goodies need background preparation before cooking them.  Tonight we will discuss several key ingredients in some of my favorites, and some of the biology and natural history about them.  Some things, like preparing nuts and persimmons, HAVE to be done in advance for various reasons, and some can be done in advance to ease the workload during the busy holiday season.

Preserving food by drying it is prehistoric.  Humans have dried food for millenia, and it works as well now as it did way back when.  In this sense, I am not talking about grains and seeds that naturally dry on the plant, with no interaction from humans, but rather foods that need a bit of help to dry without going bad.

Let us take, for example, apples.  Dried apples are wonderful, but leave that apple of the tree and it falls to the ground, and just rots.  Apples are too moist in their prime state to dry whole, especially if nature is all that is working for one.

Enter mankind to make a better process.  We have learnt to peel and slice the apples, and then put them into a place where the water is lost rather quickly, before bacteria and molds can grow.  Please read further.

Food preservation is as old as humankind, and actually predates us.  Animals are known to preserve food in a crude fashion, from dogs burying bones to squirrels stashing away nuts and acorns for later consumption.  Strictly speaking, that is not really food preservation but rather food stockpiling, but the two are extensively connected.

Our hunter/gatherer ancestors began to preserve food with the discovery and taming of fire.  The mere act of cooking meat has a preservative effect, especially when the meat is cooked to near dryness.  Drying food in the sun was also certainly practiced in warmer climates, and freezing food for later use was and still is done by nomads in the Arctic regions.

With the advent of agriculture the need for preservation of food on a large scale became essential to provide sustenance during times of crop failure, especially for grain crops.  Grains are fairly easy to preserve since they are dry, so keeping them dry and vermin out of them are the keys.  It is thought that the cat became domesticated around this time.

This series will examine various food preservation methods from the ancient to the modern, including an extensive installment on chemical preservatives.  Some of these have gotten bad press undeservedly, and some are not as safe as commonly thought.

Last time we talked about the history of the periodic table and some of the reasons behind why it “works”.  We also took a look at the first three periods (rows), the very short first period, with only two elements, and the two short periods with eight elements each in them.  We also grouped these elements into families (columns) that show similar chemical properties.

Now we shall look at Periods 4 and 5, the two long periods.  These periods (and later ones) contain the transition metals.  In the first three periods, chemical properties change radically from one element to the next as atomic number increases.  For example, fluorine, the most chemically reactive element sits next to neon, which forms no known ground state chemical compounds.

The single most important piece of scientific literature is, in my opinion, the periodic table.  Those who understand what it means, and what it actually implies, have mastered more science than most professors ever will.  This may sound like an exaggeration, but come with me and I think that I can prove it to you.

One thing that scientists like to do is to make order out of what seems to be a myriad of disjointed facts.  The table does just this.  The table did not just appear overnight; it is the product of contributions by hundreds of scientists over decades and finally took a form sort of like what we use today in 1869.  That was the year in which Dmitrii Mendeleev published his table, but he was not alone by far.

Water is a material unlike any other.  I will go on record to say that, whilst a few other substances may have a one or two unusual properties, no other known substance has as many, or as to as great an extent in toto, than does water.  If anyone can think of any other substance that has as many aberrant properties, please let me know.

Because of the unique set of properties, water is usually declared to be essential for life.  I do not know if I would go quite that far, because that sounds more like dogma than science to me.  However, I would agree that any nonaqueous form of life would be extraordinarily bizarre to us, and might not even be recognized as a lifeform.

Water is such a basic part of daily life that the ancients thought that it was a fundamental element.  Whilst they were incorrect, it is so different than anything else that it deserves a place of its own in our understanding of things.

This is the second of two installments on non-nutritive sweeteners.  This time we will talk about one very ancient one, the new ultra sweet aspartame analogue, and a couple of natural products, one of which is gaining popularity these days.

Non-nutritive sweeteners probably have value in managing conditions such as diabetes and obesity where caloric intake, particularly from simple carbohydrates, needs to be restricted.  However, these materials are not panaceas and other dietary measures are essential to control either of those conditions.  Some studies also are consistent with the premise that the mere sensation of sweetness can cause a rise in blood glucose in non-diabetic people, thus making these agents act like sugar even though they contain no calories.  These interpretations are controversial, though.

Hello, folks.  Here is another installment regarding the things that we eat.  Remember, I am a trained expert in the field (I used to head one the few “Megalabs” for FDA) so I know of what I speak.  This time we will talk about non-nutritive sweeteners since we all use them from time to time, even if we do not know it.

I was going to talk about the drugs that Michael Jackson took before he died a short time ago, but the information is still dribbling out from the Coroner’s office, and I want the whole story before I add my opinion about it.  But be assured that I will weigh in when the story is out in the open.